Portland Mercury67%
Good Morning, News: Oregonian Editorial Board is on “Team Billionaire,” Portland Fire Game Marred by Transphobia, and Loser Trump Loses Again 23%
By Wm. Steven Humphrey0%
8/3/2026, 8:53:26 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Framing Effect, Ad Hominem, and In-Group Bias, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 24.6% saturation with 361 hits. Analysis detected 1,368 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,466 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 31.3% and a BS Rank of 23% (20,014 of 26,004 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 77.00% of the article peer group.
If you believe Portland benefits from smart, local journalism and arts coverage, please consider making a small monthly contribution to the Mercury , because without you, there is no us.
Thanks for your support!
GOOD MORNING, PORTLAND!
And hop in, losers, because we’re now in August—which means lots of heat and wildfire danger.
Sunny temps will hit 85 today before getting sweltering tomorrow and Wednesday with the highs reaching 95 degrees… along with the possibility of wildfire smoke drifting into the area midweek.
However, cooler winds will ultimately prevail and temps will drop down to a more reasonable level by Friday.
But for now?
Here’s a dry blast of NEWS .
• Shall we start off with a Monday morning rant?
Whoopee, let’s go.
Last week during a city council Moda Center work session in which the Blazers ownership announced that, not only do they expect us to fork over $600 million to spruce up the arena, they also want us to drop any legal threats pertaining to the lease THAT THEY SIGNED, in which they agreed to exclusively pay for any “first class” improvements to the Moda.
They also want us to lower their taxes (shocker), and do something about “Portland’s current stagnant business climate,” as well as the city’s “divisive political environment.”
(Do they also want us to change the color of the sky from blue to dark ochre?)
Anyway, while their demands are right on brand for entitled, billionaire crybabies, and their obvious distaste for our town is uncalled for and infuriating, what’s the Oregonian editorial board’s excuse?
In yet another unasked-for opinion piece from the board , they have once again pledged their allegiance to “Team Billionaire,” insisting that in order to assuage the Blazers ownership, city council—who they accuse of “chumming the waters with anti-billionaire bombast”—must instead “confront the region’s anti-business biases,” and bend over backwards to make this deal happen.
(And this is even though no other US city has agreed to such outrageous requirements from rich team owners.)
So… yeah.
It’s one thing for rich grifters to ride into town and make outlandish demands, with the possible intention of moving the team to another city anyway.
But it’s very much another for the state’s paper of record to so blatantly (and gleefully) embrace the shittiest parts of capitalism, and put the needs of local and national billionaires ahead of the people it has promised to serve.
(Or maybe that’s just me, and my “anti-billionaire bombast.”
For the record, the Mercury would never do that to you.)
Calling for “partnership” while directing almost every practical recommendation at one side of the table is not balanced analysis.
It’s advocacy for a negotiating posture that asks the public to be more flexible while placing little pressure on the private party receiving $1.1B in public support.
• A huge fire tore through the 116-year-old, abandoned Centennial Mills warehouse on Naito Parkway yesterday, doing so much damage that firefighters feared that the building, along with its signature watertower, would collapse.
Firefighters fought the blaze from outside for their own protection, and have mostly extinguished it.
Officials believe that no one was inside the building at the time—but here’s something interesting: The vacant building is owned by real estate developer Stuart Lindquist, who is also the landlord for the highly contentious ICE facility in South Portland.
An investigation is underway to discover the cause of the fire.
• In sporting news, the tension was high on Friday night at the Portland Fire game, in which our team took on the Indiana Fever, whose star shooting guard, Sophie Cunningham, is currently on our collective shit-list for spouting off transphobic comments in an interview with ESPN.
Before the game, a group of rat-faced, right-wing influencers tried to stir up shit with Portlanders who were demanding that the team speak out against Cunningham and support our trans friends and neighbors.
Portland Fire Coach Alex Sarama did just that on Friday night by saying supportive words about the importance of inclusion, while fans loudly jeered Cunningham and waved transgender flags when she entered and every time she held the ball.
One Fire fan claims she was spit on by a transphobe during the game, and police are launching a possible hate crime investigation.
For what it’s worth, the Fire lost to the Fever, 112-98, and while the home team battled mightily, a raft of turnovers and the Fever’s smothering defense eventually won the day.
(Though we won the moral war.)
For a deeper dive into the Cunningham controversy, our Stephanie Kaloi has more.
• One person is dead and five others are injured following a shooting early Sunday morning at a large, at least 100-person gathering on Northeast Alberta in the Cully neighborhood.
Details are scant, but according to police, the party was originally busted up by the cops around midnight, but many remained, and at around 3:30 am, shots rang out and shell casings were later discovered over a three-block radius.
Five were hurt in the altercation, but not critically, while an 18-year-old died from his injuries.
The police currently have no suspects, and are continuing the investigation.
• Saturday, August 8, is the last day of operations for Portland’s Lloyd Mall which, as you may have heard, is being demolished to make way for a new, mixed housing, office, and retail development project.
But the aged shopping center is going out with a bang rather than a whimper— there are multiple events to enjoy before the closure, including a pop-up art fair, a silent disco in the food court, a Pedalpalooza funeral ride, a music event that incorporates live musicians (including Karma Rivera), poetry, and karaoke, a tour of the mall, and lots more surprises.
IN NATIONAL AND WORLD NEWS:
• Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s dreams of becoming Trump’s permanent AG were almost torpedoed by members of his own party, until he finally agreed to rescind the president’s $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization fund” that would’ve compensated his allies (like the domestic terrorist turds of January 6) for supposedly being “persecuted” by rational people.
The two GOP senators who were holding up the nomination, Texas Sen.
John Cornyn and North Carolina Sen.
Thom Tillis, confirmed that the fund is now officially dead, and that another of Trump’s selfishly evil plans—receiving broad immunity for the president and members of his family from tax audits—has been walked back, opening Trump up to future examination of his taxes.
To the surprise of no one, the president is all-caps FURIOUS about this turn of events, and is considering pulling Blanche’s nomination until Cornyn and Tillis are out of office next year.
(There are so many “wins” in this story, I’m having trouble keeping count!)
The Pentagon just admitted—with about as much subtlety as a bomb going off—that it’s fast running out of ideas for Donald Trump’s war on Iran.
• In more embarrassingly bad news for Trump, his ridiculous claim that the peeling floor of the National Mall’s reflecting pool was caused by vandals took another blow last week when his hand-picked U.S.
Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, concluded the damage was due to shoddy workmanship, and in response dropped all charges against the suspects.
(Note: Pirro said almost the exact opposite a month ago, claiming that the government had “tremendous evidence” that the damage was caused by vandalism.)
Pirro’s sudden (and very public) switcheroo obviously did not please Trump, who once again went all-caps FURIOUS on social media—leaving many to wonder if he has any other emotions these days other than all-caps FURIOUS.
• A massive fire in eastern Washington state has forced the evacuation of 60,000 people in the Spokane area , and has already destroyed more than 600 homes and businesses.
By this morning, the fire has been 0 percent contained, though firefighters are hoping that cooler weather sweeping through the area will assist them in fighting the overwhelming blaze.
Thankfully, at this point, no one is missing or has been killed by the fire—though it’s still too early to tell for sure.
• Representatives for pop singer and actress Ariana Grande have announced that as soon as she wraps up her current tour, she will be taking “a step back from visibility” due to “endless, ongoing public scrutiny” regarding her body and health.
Grande, who also has left the London production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park With George , has pushed back against her critics, saying that their constant need to comment on the bodies of others is “dangerous for all parties involved.”
• And finally… I’d ask this guy to help me work on my house—but it would TAKE HIM FOR-E-VER!
Analysis
Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.